A few other such Jovian events are known—in one case, the massive planet may have held onto its captive comet for more than half a century.

To uncover the 12-year rendezvous between Jupiter and Comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu, an icy body discovered in 1993, the research team, led by Katsuhito Ohtsuka of the Tokyo Meteor Network, tracked the orbits of likely comets back 100 years based on their known characteristics today.

From about May 1949 to July 1961, the group found, Comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu was pulled in by Jupiter's influence before escaping to its present orbit via a gravitationally stable zone known as a Lagrange point, where the gravitational influence of two bodies—in this case Jupiter and the sun—balance out.